I know this for a fact, because the guy who invented browser cookies told me so.

Whilst cruising the Web recently I found a Web site called Technology Review (at http://www.technologyreview.com), which describes itself as "MIT's magazine of innovation." Technology Review has an interesting yearly roundup of "100 innovators under 35" (at http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/tr100_0602.asp?p=2). This list is an extremely interesting read in itself, and I encourage you to check it out. One of those innovators is Lou Montulli (at http://www.montulli.com/lou/), one of the pioneers at Netscape. Lou is responsible for innovations such as Web proxying, the blink tag, and the incorporation of animated GIFs into the Web browser. Lou also invented cookies.

I dropped Lou an email asking him for the real story. Here's his response:

Lou doesn't mince words, but there it is--cookies are named after the term "magic cookie" used by Unix programmers. The link in Lou's email points to The New Hackers Dictionary, which defines a magic cookie as "Something passed between routines or programs that enables the receiver to perform some operation."

So it turns out that I was right. There is a reason for cookies being named cookies. And I was wrong. Cookies aren't named after Chinese fortune cookies. Now I am satisfied.

Andrew Stuart is a software designer, consultant and Lotus Domino programmer and has been working with computers for 16 years. Andrew is Managing Director of Touchdown Systems Design in Melbourne Australia at http://www.touchdown.com.au. He can be reached at astuart@mira.net.